Is this getting a bit out of hand? - RSV jabs

[Agent_zed]

For the sake of discussion, how many of the people on here who are saying that vaccines are a moral obligation for societal health (for the record I do for most vaccines, but I don't think it hurts to question things) bother to look after themselves e.g. exercise regularly, avoid alcohol and processed meats?

Long term health conditions such as obesity, which is largely self induced, are rapidly causing increased demand on the NHS. What difference does it make if you take every vaccine going if you are 4 stone overweight and eat bacon for every meal.

 

[jetsetwilly]

Lots of cross-posting - but thankfully little cross posting (I'll get me coat in a minute)

As a sometime scientist in a related field, I admit that I contribute to these discussions mainly because of the antivax thing, which I choose to oppose. I'm trying to be reasonable about it, and for the record I don't see Nick as anti-vaccination, nor do I see antivaxxers as stupid or horrible - I just think they are utterly wrong, and that the narrative is toxic and er, contagious.

My brother is an antivaxxer, and I think his reasons for it are typical - he's not a scientist but he is smart, and there is lots of information going around that he can look at and understand. So he weighs what he sees, and as a fairly typical smartphone user what he sees is a lot of content that has been targeted to him by 'the algorithm' (topic for another thread), and 'Vaccines are killing people!' gets more eyeballs than 'Vaccines are OK!'. The rest, unfortunately, is inevitable - the only possible defence against it, as far as I can see, is scientific rigour, which sadly is less prevalent than smartphones.

To answer @Agent_zed , I do feel a moral obligation to get me and mine vaccinated (and I do consider each vaccine, not least because I also have a moral obligation to my children who don't get to choose). I do exercise, maintain a reasonable weight, and moderate alcohol and other things that I consider harmful, which in the last few years has meant minimising ultraprocessed food and maximising whole foods and diversity. Obesity etc are indeed huge problems - hence my comment about preventative healthcare earlier in this thread. It's a tricky one to fix because it's so multifactorial, but I for one would support classifying it as a disease for pragmatic reasons, and some sort of effort to disadvantage UPF in the market.

 

[Jacob]

For the sake of discussion, how many of the people on here who are saying that vaccines are a moral obligation for societal health (for the record I do for most vaccines, but I don't think it hurts to question things) bother to look after themselves e.g. exercise regularly, avoid alcohol and processed meats?

I'm one. Naturally inclined to total self-indulgence but make attempts to counter this - cycling, walking, diet, alcohol 14 units or less, etc. Took up C25K rather late in the day and occasionally run, which was a very unfamiliar thing. Wish I'd done it sooner, though several old fell runners I know are suffering in old age. Everything in moderation!

Long term health conditions such as obesity, which is largely self induced, are rapidly causing increased demand on the NHS. What difference does it make if you take every vaccine going if you are 4 stone overweight and eat bacon for every meal.

I guess a point could be reached where the vaccine effect is too insignificant compared to the other issues.
The quacks are hard at it on the obesity front too - promoting the idea that obesity is an illness and not just a simple equation between too much fat going in and not enough exercise to work it off. Though addiction is an "illness" I guess, and this can be treated, CBT and other ways.

 

[jetsetwilly]

@Jacob the obesity=disease thing is thorny I think and there are strong arguments on both sides. But equating obesity with fat intake has in part led to the current issue. Balancing calories against exercise is tricky too because of the relatively small marginal energy cost of moderate exercise, and the complex interplay between exercise, diet and metabolism, and the complexity in calorie-counting. Of course ultimately it is about energy, and how to maintain this body, that evolved where food was scarce and life expentancy low, in a different world. But how to map that to actionable lifestyle changes is the question...

I'm keen on intermittent (12h) fasting and eating whole foods. I like fasting in principle because it seems natural, and in practice because it's easy for me to skip breakfast and get less flab, fewer aches and a happier me. I like whole foods for basically the same reasons - they are obviously more natural than processed foods, and I feel better, and it gives me pleasure to cook and eat them too, and I think I'm imparting useful knowledge to my kids. I'm not obsessive about any of it, and I do drink and eat rubbish at times.

 

[Jacob]

@Jacob the obesity=disease thing is thorny I think and there are strong arguments on both sides. But equating obesity with fat intake has in part led to the current issue. Balancing calories against exercise is tricky too because of the relatively small marginal energy cost of moderate exercise, and the complex interplay between exercise, diet and metabolism, and the complexity in calorie-counting. Of course ultimately it is about energy, and how to maintain this body, that evolved where food was scarce and life expentancy low, in a different world. But how to map that to actionable lifestyle changes is the question...

I'm keen on intermittent (12h) fasting and eating whole foods. I like fasting in principle because it seems natural, and in practice because it's easy for me to skip breakfast and get less flab, fewer aches and a happier me. I like whole foods for basically the same reasons - they are obviously more natural than processed foods, and I feel better, and it gives me pleasure to cook and eat them too, and I think I'm imparting useful knowledge to my kids. I'm not obsessive about any of it, and I do drink and eat rubbish at times.

My basic diet regime was 50%, whereby you eat as normal, including rubbish, but about half the quantity. Worked really well - e.g. we have fish n chips occasionally but one portion between us. Still fills a plate and becomes normal. Ditto pub meals etc. which seem impossibly huge.
Got a bit more thorough latterly, with reduced fat and a lot of other details
Saves money, or spend the same on higher quality in smaller quantities!

 

[jetsetwilly]

Good time to answer the unasked question of whether I'm hopelessly naiive about all of those regulatory bodies that I mentioned. No, I'm not. Governments are utterly complicit in the rise of UPF despite compelling evidence of harm. Chris van Tulleken is a well-known author and campaigner against UPF - I picked this random link as an intro, and recommend his book Ultraprocessed People, as well as Spoonfed by Tim Spector.

 

[Terry - Somerset]

Well Dr Robert Malone who holds many of the MRNA patents as he was active in the research and development of them and is in fact damaged from the Covid ‘vaccines’ , actually has stated that the technology is not safe to be used in the way that it has been used in making these ‘vaccines’. In fact the official labelling of vaccines was changed because the MRNA vaccines did not fit the official definition. Only this week research from South Korea and Japan has revealed that some unrecognised nano structures are growing in human blood that contains the Covid vaccine. https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=pfbid02A3xX1wJyUGKgNeBwuw2K8DC1hg8bnVxxFgKv5Mhxspv44LUZAGABrKuExdBCwsJ5l&id=643852289 His claims and suggestions have been discredited and denounced by medical professionals as not only wrong, but also dangerous.

I have tried searching for Dr Robert Malone. A 5 minute look at the results, including that on a lot of respected media, seems to indicate he belongs to the "nutter" end of scientific endeavour - to quote from the Washington Post:

His claims and suggestions have been discredited and denounced by medical professionals as not only wrong, but also dangerous.

 

[NickDReed]

Is vaccinating for herd immunity a good thing? I don't know of any alternatives (do you have any in mind?) but I guess the answer depends on the severity of the disease (= the benefit of herd immunity) vs the cost (to me and society) of vaccination. Both hard to weigh, firstly because we don't have all of the data or the skills to turn it into a prediction, and secondly because of the inherent noise in such a prediction. So it's back to those regulated public bodies for recommendations.

I suppose my thought on this is twofold. Firstly, is immunity binary and you’re either immune or you’re not? If it is, then are these drugs fulfilling their goals if they do not stop you from contracting a virus, or prevent illness caused by it? Secondly, wouldn’t the alternative to vaccination for herd immunity be natural herd immunity from exposure to the virus and immune systems creating their response? I was also under the impression that natural immunity is largely considered more robust and longer lasting than that created by these drugs, but I would assume this differs for different individuals and different drugs.

Why do you make that assumption btw? Why assume that the NHS, NICE, JCVI etc would accept a newer, costlier drug over an equivalent cheaper one? As mentioned already, cost is a paramount consideration.

My assumption that the new drug would be costlier is due to it being new, and therefore likely under patent with a specific manufacturer thus impeding a reduction in the price by competitor manufacturers competition driving down the production and therefore sale price. My assumption that RSV has previously been treated by other (cheaper?) means is due to the fact RSV is not a new discovery and will have been treated by other means historically which seemingly was reasonably effective resulting in its low lethality. I appreciate whoever that this treatment, presumably largely in the community with over-the-counter medications does not take into account hospital admissions as a result of higher risk patients requiring hospital admission.

Waning immunity has been well-described for decades. It's not 100% understood (certainly not by me!) but reflect on the need for tetanus boosters - why do you think that is? It's because over time an immunised person's response to a tetanus challenge gets weaker, to the point where they are not adequately protected against disease. Booster shots of the vaccine boost immunity back up. It's not a new thing.

No, I appreciate it’s not a new thing and boosters for many jabs have been around for a long time. As I previously stated, I first noticed the use of the specific language ‘fully vaccinated’ during the pandemic. It seemed to appear when the initial vaccine we were sold as the panacea that would allow us to ‘return to normal’ did not stop people from getting the virus, nor did it prevent people from becoming ill or transmitting the virus. As I previously said I saw this moving of the goal post with suspicion and distrust. That is only a personal insight not a call to arms.

There are probably some examples, but I'm not aware of any modern vaccine being less effective than predicted, except sometimes those for seasonal flu where they are tracking a moving target, and maybe the covid vaccines where, similarly, it was hard to predict whether the strain being targeted today would be the strain causing most disease by the time the vaccine rolled out. I say 'maybe' the covid vaccines, because I don't think the emergence of new strains would have surprised any scientist, and therefore any predictions of vaccine efficacy would have had that caveat - just not in the headline figure.

I’m by no means a virologist but isn’t a large hurdle in treating a virus specifically over threating the symptoms it causes, the fact they can be prone to random mutation. So, in essence most vaccines for treating viruses are tracking a moving target?

On the 'seeming desire to depend on vaccines as a solution to all illnesses', I guess I have two thoughts. 1) Would you rather get a disease and be treated, or be immunised in advance? Within reason I think immunisation is better, but obviously it will never be universally true, or unanimously accepted.

I agree with this sentiment, if the treatment prevents infection and or illness from the disease, and if the risk of getting the disease cause significant risk to wellbeing. If a disease is likely to cause mild symptoms and a natural immune response is likely to be sufficient to counteract the virus, then I might be inclined to disagree particularly if the treatment doesn’t necessarily prevent illness.

2) Yep, there are more vaccines now than there used to be - Hooray! Would I rather go back to a world with polio in it, to save my kids a vaccine shot? Nope. Would I rather not face a winter of seasonal illnesses? Yep. Would I prefer my elderly relatives to have not succumbed to a respiratory pathogen (if you live long enough, 'pneumonia' will likely feature on your death certificate).

Unfortunately, we are all going to succumb to something. If I am lucky(?) enough to reach an old age, I just hope whatever takes me out is quick.

I guess this raises the need to understand your vaccinations to decide if you want them. Luckily, they are not compulsory.

I whole heartedly agree.

 

[jetsetwilly]

So is the assertion is that the mothers of high risk children will not take their progeny to a health professional on a monthly/weekly/daily basis to ensure their child receives required medication or intervention?

That was not my assertion. I was asserting that compliance with a monthly population (everybody) vaccination program would be low, precisely because most of the subjects would not see themselves or their progeny as high-risk - aeons ago I learned about this (obvious?) point with supporting data, but I don't have it to hand now. I believe compliance with the existing monoclonal vaccination program, which targets only high-risk children, is good enough for it to be viable as a means to protect those children.

I did some brief reading about the history of RSV and particularly vaccine development and read a bit about the vaccine developed in the 60s that ended up causing vaccine enhanced disease in children. I had assumed that the newly approved drug would work on an entirely different mechanism, you may be able to advise different.

AFAIK the early vaccines were whole-virus vaccines, whereas the new one is a partial vaccine - two coat protein antigens I believe. The mechanism is the same - the injected antigen (hopefully) causes the patient's body to synthesise antibodies - but the actual antigen, and the path to its production, is different.

 

[Jake]

Based on the 90% infection rate against the average birth rate, it equates to roughly 544,500 child infections each year, of those an average of 83 deaths per year in this age range, equalling 0.015% fatal infection. If we're to estimate that is 50% of individuals whose illness was severe it would total 0.03% of children at severe risk of an infection whose immune system would not be able to fight off the virus independently.

This paper
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(24)01716-1/abstract
suggests rather different proportions (albeit global and infants generally not new-born specifically): 33m global infections in under 5s with 3.6m being severe enough to lead to hospitalisation (so 11% rather than your assumption of 0.03%), with a mortality rate of 0.036 (so not so far off on that).

 

[NickDReed]

This paper
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(24)01716-1/abstract
suggests rather different proportions (albeit global and infants generally not new-born specifically): 33m global infections in under 5s with 3.6m being severe enough to lead to hospitalisation (so 11% rather than your assumption of 0.03%), with a mortality rate of 0.036 (so not so far off on that).

Difficult to know if it then becomes comparing apples and oranges when looking at global figures. The very rough and ready figures I worked out were based on UK specific information available, by no means am I claiming they are facts, just what seemed a reasonable indicative figure. I would imagine it is very difficult to assess how different environmental factors would impact different populations.

 

[Noel]

PS. To the moderators - If Mr Biden has been putting pressure on you to remove certain content from your platform as it doesn't support the agreed narrative supported by the powers that be, I apologise and will not hold it against you if you delete my post encouraging discourse.

Just had an email from the White House................might have to delete this thread......

Did you really think "Mr Biden has been putting pressure" on our content?

 

[NickDReed]

Just had an email from the White House................might have to delete this thread......

Did you really think "Mr Biden has been putting pressure" on our content?

I'd assumed if the great Zuckerberg would bend over then there was little hope here!

Stay strong brothers and sisters. Fight the man!

 

[Jacob]

.... wouldn’t the alternative to vaccination for herd immunity be natural herd immunity from exposure to the virus and immune systems creating their response? I was also under the impression that natural immunity is largely considered more robust and longer lasting than that created by these drugs,

That was one of Johnson's suggestions, spirited out of thin air, contradictory and meaningless.
Covid was spreading, people were dying, QED; there was no adequate or meaningful "natural" immunity developing.

 

[TRITON]

Surely extending the lives of old people and saving babies is a good idea. And why"incendiary"? Seems quite uncontroversial to me.

Some people seem not to take the 'human element' into their calculations.

Take a look at the vitriol against Edward Jenner, the man who eradicated smallpox. Same anti-vax writing articles and forming societies against him.
Today the entire planet is smallpox free. Prior to the vaccine it is estimated the disease was will us for over 3000 years.

If we listened to these anti-vax people it is 100% certain we would still have smallpox devastating the population
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leicestershire-50713991

I see measles is on the rise again. Oh,. I wonder why...

 

[Agent_zed]

That was one of Johnson's suggestions, spirited out of thin air, contradictory and meaningless.
Covid was spreading, people were dying, QED; there was no adequate or meaningful "natural" immunity developing.

The chances that it was just made up by Johnson is extremely low as for one he would have had teams of scientific advisors. Unless you happened to be in one of the cobra meetings you can not possibly know what was done or said. Besides this, heard immunity would have been exactly what has happened in the animal kingdom since the beginning of creation. We didn't have vaccines for 100,00's of years, so would either have been wiped out or developed natural immunity.

The entire point of lockdown was to slow the virus to stop the NHS being overwhelmed and give time to work out how to treat it, not to irradicate it. Plenty of people got covid without a vaccine (because we didn't have one at the time!) and survived, and over time it has become less deadly to most people, in part due to virus mutations as well as vaccinated people, and people who have naturally developed immunity from having the virus.

I have the vaccine at the time, but there is no need for me to repeat it now, as the virus has significantly changed.

 

[John Brown]

The chances that it was just made up by Johnson is extremely low as for one he would have had teams of scientific advisors. Unless you happened to be in one of the cobra meetings you can not possibly know what was done or said. Besides this, heard immunity would have been exactly what has happened in the animal kingdom since the beginning of creation. We didn't have vaccines for 100,00's of years, so would either have been wiped out or developed natural immunity.

The entire point of lockdown was to slow the virus to stop the NHS being overwhelmed and give time to work out how to treat it, not to irradicate it. Plenty of people got covid without a vaccine (because we didn't have one at the time!) and survived, and over time it has become less deadly to most people, in part due to virus mutations as well as vaccinated people, and people who have naturally developed immunity from having the virus.

I have the vaccine at the time, but there is no need for me to repeat it now, as the virus has significantly changed.

I believe the vaccine has changed also, but even if it hasn't, isn't there something analogous to a half-life for the antibodies?

 

[Jacob]

The chances that it was just made up by Johnson is extremely low as for one he would have had teams of scientific advisors.

He was noted for ignoring advice, mainly because it was beyond his comprehension. Instead he'd improvise and churn out all sorts of gibberish and the "natural herd immunity" was something he raised publicly. He was completely out of his depth.

Unless you happened to be in one of the cobra meetings you can not possibly know what was done or said. Besides this, heard immunity would have been exactly what has happened in the animal kingdom since the beginning of creation.

We didn't have vaccines for 100,00's of years, so would either have been wiped out or developed natural immunity.

Populations have been wiped out in the past and viruses continually crop up which have not generated any immunity. That's what vaccination is all about.
The most vulnerable sector of society has always been the very young, mothers in childbirth and the very old. Vaccines (and other measures, principally hygiene) have effectively doubled life expectancy in recent years. Not that the very old live much longer but that the newborn and their mothers survive to old age in much greater numbers.

The entire point of lockdown was to slow the virus to stop the NHS being overwhelmed and give time to work out how to treat it, not to irradicate it.

Lockdown and then the vaccine.

Plenty of people got covid without a vaccine (because we didn't have one at the time!) and survived, and over time it has become less deadly to most people, in part due to virus mutations as well as vaccinated people, and people who have naturally developed immunity from having the virus.

But covid is still around , with vaccination regimes restarted to combat it.

I have the vaccine at the time, but there is no need for me to repeat it now, as the virus has significantly changed.

And you may need a "significantly changed" vaccine to counter it.

 

[Agent_zed]

He was noted for ignoring advice, mainly because it was beyond his comprehension. Instead he'd improvise and churn out all sorts of gibberish and the "natural herd immunity" was something he raised publicly. He was completely out of his depth.

Again, this is just your opinion. You have no facts at all on this. Of course he raised it publicly, he was the figurehead of the government, that was his job.

You are looking at this with hindsight. Go back to the start of the pandemic. whether you like him or not, Johnson had few options. Either assume people will develop immunity over time and accept the loss of some life (as other countries also considered), or shutdown the country for an indefinite period of time.

No one had a vaccine at that point! There was no way to know if that was even a possibility to create one, so for all anyone knew you could shutdown the country forever and eventually just run out of food and resources.

The lockdowns were to manage the influx of patients.

And you may need a "significantly changed" vaccine to counter it.

For the vast majority of people, you do not. The current strain is mild enough to not require one for most people. In the same way most people don't require a flu jab. which is the entire point of this thread ie the balance of vaccinations vs outcome.


Whilst vaccines have been and will continue to greatly benefit mankind, you have to be incredibly careful messing about with mother nature. There is a strong possibility that covid19 escaped from a lab, although we will never know the truth as there are too many politics involved. But there is no argument that there are labs all around the world working on virus's all the time and accidents happen, such as the 1979 Anthrax release from a Soviet bio lab.

 

[jetsetwilly]

We can't know whether he decided to employ it off-the-cuff, but we do know that Bojo the clown didn't just invent the term 'herd immunity', which is when the population as a whole resists the spread of a disease because enough people are immune.

To be clear, vaccination and prior infection (and I suppose even lockdown, or the death or sequestration of susceptible people) are all routes to herd immunity. And yes, prior infection generally results in a more robust immunity than vaccination.

I'm no fan of the Mayo clinic but this article is a reasonable precis:

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases...th/herd-immunity-and-coronavirus/art-20486808

Note that RSV is called out as a poor candidate for infection-acquired herd immunity.